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| Artwork by Tarek Chemaly |
I am honestly not sure what is happening but there is a deluge of bad ads I am seeing as of late. I cannot blame it on 2026 because these things take a lot of time to materialize and be decided and approved and even with AI which is making the process much faster in terms of execution there is always 17 opinions to cater for (including the CEO's wife or girlfriend or both).
Of course my first reflex was "it's just me, little appeals to my taste" until a friend said (when I showed him one ad) "I didn't send it to you, I knew how viscerally you'd react". And then plugging a link to another friend with the line "how stupid can you be?" he sent back a voice message of how idiotic this whole campaign is, especially that we had seen that same scenario play on 18.578 ads since the 80s.
Does one blame the "creatives" (between quotes because they are anything but), does one blame those who approved the ads? I am not saying marketing department or what not because the level we are dealing with is anything from large conglomerates to smalltime companies where decisions are taken by owners.
Whatever it is, the result is the same, silly, forgettable ads, with no creative backbone to hold them or anything resembling strategy (considering one of the people who came up with one of the stupid ads I am speaking of said "come up with it yourself!" when I asked why there was not an Arabic selling line to an FMCG good in his student's final presentation). Of course what bothers mostly is the quantity considering the quantity is abysmal.
And here we are, a giant - and I mean giant - ad space space was booked for what is essentially something that is so horrific that it hurts the eye, Instagram is filled with AI ads that make absolutely no sense at all, but "haha" and "for the third year we are partnering with... (fill in the blanks)" - and worse comments filled with heart and fire and smiley emojis from - well the CEOs wife, girlfriend or both.
I am not sure how we got to this situation, but here are are.
"Now is the winter of our discontent," said the Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III) in Shakespeare's play. As I write this in the middle of a storm, I wish I was speaking about the weather.